[CQ-Contest] Will there be anyone to work in 20 years?

[Matt Murphy]

I recently got back into ham radio (99% of my interest is contesting).  I'm
now 36 and was first licensed at age 12.

One thing I find interesting is the number of young people in the rufzxp
toplist:

http://rufzxp.net/toplist.htm

Scroll down to the "youngster" categories and click on some of the
callsigns.  There are some young kids copying some pretty fast CW. Of
course not many are in the US.

I would love a way to play the rufzxp simulator on my iPhone while riding
on the train.

There really weren't all that many people in my age group to get licensed,
and even fewer get into contesting.

When I was a kid I would often get invited to better stations to
participate in contests, but there were many contests where I'd try to
compete from my humble home station.  I would have loved a contest where
*all* participants were required to use 100W and a low dipole.  My dream
was to run stations from my QTH but regardless of operator skill it's next
to impossible to get a run frequency with a weak signal from the midwestern
US.

Apparently the number of licensed hams is increasing... and the "maker
movement" has attracted young people who like to build things.  If these
people were all able to see what contesting is all about, I'm sure many
would get hooked.  I'd love to see contest clubs do more to demo contesting
to the ham community.  Also, University club stations would seem to be a
good place to donate equipment.  I'd guess that there must be a few hams on
nearly any engineering campus.

I'm glad this is being discussed!

73,
Matt NQ6N/2


On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 12:39 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett <w0mu at w0mu.com> wrote:

> and most housing developments are not ham radio friendly.  To be very
> competitive requires lots of antennas or a guest station while having a top
> end gaming rig is no big deal.
>
> I think a good portion of the new hams are getting licenses for helping
> with emergency services, Red Cross, storm chasing, etc.
>
> My youngest has a license and I wish he showed more interest.  He has an
> Xbox, computer, smartphone and that is what interests him.
>
> While chasing a carrot on a stick is a popular gaming strategy where you
> are always chasing the best stuff, it is not followed by all.  Many people
> want games filled with people, especially the shoot em ups where that
> provides more victims per se.  When the population falls off the game
> starts to die.
>
> It is great that we are getting more people to send in logs.  We know that
> a great many people do not operate the majority of the hours in the
> contests, so my question is: if we go back 10 or 20 years what is the
> percentage of serious entries compared to now and what is the percentage of
> part timers then and now.
>
> I fear that we are are the peak of contesting and from here out as the ham
> population continues to age the entries will start to fall off.
>
> I am with Kelly and I really have no answers on how to attract new blood
> to fold.
>
> Mike W0MU
>
>
> On 5/26/2013 11:35 AM, David Gilbert wrote:
>
>>
>> Dragging out that old, tired, and mostly erroneous accusation of "instant
>> gratification" is totally missing the point.  I spend a fair amount of time
>> myself playing online multiplayer games, a genre that is predominantly
>> comprised of people in the age range of 14-35 (pretty much the same age
>> bracket that hams belonged to about 50 years ago).  Guess what one of the
>> dominant themes in most of those games are ... it's called "progression",
>> which means starting at a very low, almost useless level and having to
>> scratch and claw your way up the ladder as you acquire and learn how to use
>> new and more complicated skills.   It's a process that can take months for
>> a new player, and trust me ... it's WAY more complicated than memorizing
>> multiple choice answers for a license exam.
>>
>> Want to know the fastest growing demographic for video games, out of the
>> 100 million or so who play semi-regularly?  It's women with a median age
>> around 30.   I'm pretty sure I wouldn't characterize women as being lazier
>> than men.
>>
>> http://www.theesa.com/facts/**gameplayer.asp<http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp>
>>
>> http://www.theonlinemom.com/**secondary.asp?id=2106<http://www.theonlinemom.com/secondary.asp?id=2106>
>>
>> http://www.spacedaily.com/**reports/More_videogame_**
>> players_moving_online_survey_**999.html<http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/More_videogame_players_moving_online_survey_999.html>
>>
>> The simple facts are that video games today offer a much more compelling
>> way to efficiently and effectively interact with others around the globe
>> than ham radio does.   There is no way that ham radio is going to be
>> relevant to today's youth like it was to us. All in all, ham radio is the
>> least reliable, most restrictive, most limited, and most expensive way to
>> communicate with anyone else short of a large scale natural disaster ...
>> not to mention having far greater barriers (license, neighborhood
>> restrictions, building permits, etc) to participation.  There is simply no
>> comparison.
>>
>> o   Ham radio is far more expensive.
>>
>> o   Ham radio has far worse quality than Skype or cellphones (which are
>> now a gaming platform in their own right).
>>
>> o   Ham radio is bulky, predominantly fixed, and requires a significant
>> amount of exterior hardware that can be problematic in many housing areas.
>>
>> o   You can't share music or pictures with decent resolution via ham
>> radio.
>>
>> o   Worldwide, there are at least 1,000 cell phone users for every
>> amateur radio licensee, and that ratio is probably closer to 10,000 when
>> considering active hams.  The ratio is much higher yet when you add in PCs
>> that can do anything a ham rig can ... except better. If you want to
>> interact with someone ... anyone ... why limit yourself to a very small
>> fraction of the world's population?
>>
>> o   Applications like Skype are free, available worldwide, and provide FM
>> quality voice from any PC to anyone anywhere in the world anytime of day or
>> night.  If you really want to communicate, you don't rely on the F2 layer.
>>
>> o   Ham radio is one-dimensional ... pretty much all you can do is talk.
>>  Cell Phones and PC's allow active interaction (such as via multiplayer
>> games or other features) that create a rich and dynamic environment instead
>> of simply a conversation.  In any modern online game you are immersed in
>> colorful graphics that are simply amazing, and you interact with the
>> environment and multiple other players directly and in real time.
>>
>> o   Contesting in ham radio is an isolated activity ... you sit in a
>> chair for as many of the 48 hours you can physically tolerate doing the
>> same rote activity over and over, while your competitors independently do
>> the same thing.  In online games, you compete directly in real time by
>> anticipating your opponent's moves and abilities, countering them, and
>> attacking with your own abilities ... often trying to utilize a complex
>> environment to your advantage.  It's a multiple dimensional activity that
>> involves establishing your own strategy (often as a team) and trying to
>> counter the strategies of your opponents.  The closest analogy I can think
>> of for radiosport is if we had the ability to somehow decrease an
>> opponent's score in real time during the contest through our own ability or
>> by offsetting his.  I've tried to think of ways to do this but so far I've
>> not come up with much.
>>
>> o   Ham radio no longer is a vehicle for learning anything relevant to a
>> future career.  There is some impressive technology in today's ham rigs but
>> I'd bet there isn't a soul out there today who would decide to get into ham
>> radio so he/she could learn how to write DSP software or program an FPGA.
>>  It mostly works the other way around ... hams who learned those things
>> elsewhere decided to apply them to their hobby.  Having a ham radio license
>> listed on your resume isn't going to elicit any better consideration than
>> antique car restoring or skeet shooting. Playing a video game isn't going
>> to get you hired either, but at least the platform you're staying familiar
>> with (PCs and cellphones) comes from the current century.
>>
>> I can pretty much guarantee that almost none of us, if we were kids
>> today, would take the trouble to get a ham license.  The ONLY thing that
>> ham radio in general can claim in it's favor is that there isn't a
>> subscription fee, but that is pretty much irrelevant when you consider that
>> cell phones, PCs, and connections to the internet are going to exist in
>> great numbers without ham radio anyway.  Think we can convince anyone, even
>> ourselves, to toss their cell phone or PC and rely strictly on ham radio??
>>  Good luck with that.
>>
>> There is indeed one aspect of ham radio that has some enduring merit,
>> though, and that is contesting.  Competition is competition no matter the
>> vehicle, and some of the relative negatives of ham radio (scarcity of
>> participants, unreliable propagation, etc) actually become part of the
>> appeal.  The problem is that represents a VERY narrow slice of the world
>> (partly because there are so many vehicles to engage in competition ...
>> heck, there are even competitive BBQ events), and ham radio at a
>> competitive level simply is not accessible for very many people.  Most of
>> us on this reflector love to contest via ham radio, but that's because we
>> grew up with ham radio ... not because we were seeking competition and
>> decided that ham radio was the most effective way to satisfy that itch.   I
>> guarantee that it isn't ... a $250 PC will open up far more opportunities
>> to reliably compete with far more other participants in a far more complex
>> environment far less expensively than ham radio could ever dream of.
>>
>> In my opinion, our hobby has strictly niche appeal and in spite of the
>> misleading license figures it is a dying one.  As best I can tell from the
>> limited figures I've seen the average age of hams now increases almost two
>> years for every three years that go by. Look at pictures of hams from any
>> recent convention (Dayton, Visalia, etc) or club meeting and compare them
>> to pictures from thirty years ago ... it's almost shocking.  I'm all for
>> encouraging new people to join ham radio, and especially for encouraging
>> existing hams to become contesters, but it is delusional to think that we
>> can do much of anything to significantly affect the overall demographics.
>>  There are simply too many better options.
>>
>> Even worse, it's ridiculous to blame the situation on "a desire for
>> instant gratification by the younger generation."  That's such a
>> head-in-the-sand misrepresentation that all it demonstrates is how out of
>> touch most of us are.
>>
>> Dave   AB7E
>>
>>
>> On 5/26/2013 7:10 AM, Cqtestk4xs at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>> ...and you forgot one other thing.
>>>   Today's young people live in an instant gratification society. Why
>>> spend
>>> time studying for a license to talk to someone in Russia when you can do
>>> it
>>> today on Skype.  I applaud the efforts of those who are doing lots of
>>> work
>>> to encourage people to get into the hobby, but it is a tough battle.
>>>   Bill K4XS
>>>
>>
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